Thursday, February 13, 2014

Valentine's Traditions

Valentine's morning was always special growing up in the Reems household. We've blogged before about the Reems love of tradition - on February 14th this meant candy and chocolate at the breakfast table, an assortment of homemade cards from each sibling and parents at our place settings. Joan (Mom) always did the grunt work in the festivity set-up but it was Guy's (Dad's) job to write the personalized Valentine poems. These weren't epic odes that were lovingly pondered over, no these were hasty limric scrawls with a few puns thrown in for good measure. I found a sample in my crawlspace (I often accuse Mike of being a horder but I have several shoe boxes full of cards that I've amassed from about age 6 onwards). I'm guessing this is circa about 1995:

I came across sibling cards as well; for me this card-exchanging tradition continued right until I left home at age 22 - I will need confirmation from the younger siblings but I'm sure that the homemade card swap went strong until it was just Rachel and the parents sitting over their Valentine pancakes. Again, the level of artistic investment varied from year to year, but not breaking with tradition was paramount. Here is a sampling:

Now on Valentine's Eve I am 40 weeks pregnant and counting, wondering if tomorrow will be the day I might be popping out little Romeo or Valentino - I've thought like this for the last 10 days or so, but now that my due date has come and gone the impending arrival is never far from my mind. I wonder how a February 14th birthday will fit into the Campbell Valentine's tradition?

Oh right, this is a food blog -

The kiddies and I have been busy with Valentine day preparations - today we made Chocolate Heart Sugar Cookies today from Baking A Moment. They were a big hit- though if I could of cut the 2-year-old with a fondness for chocolate dough and icing sugar frosting out of the process it might have felt a little more relaxing.

I'm off to lay out the construction hearts and requisite candy offerings. Go squeeze your honey.

2 comments:

I admit, I still get a little thrill when I cut my Valentine's Day hearts out of pink (this year) or red paper. In fact, I had all the grade 2 and 3 students cutting Valentines for their favourtie books in their library time...Yes, Haley, we did continue to exchange Valentines, just the three of us, or 'the core' as I'd like to say in those final years before leaving the nest...I love that you used the name Valentino because that's exactly what I dubbed the little guy! (I didn't think of Romeo but I like that option as well).Anyhow, I'm off to squeeze my honey.love ya!